This is a not very informative posting (sorry) but I have to vent this out: I got my X31 back!!

Long story short: I gave this X31 to one of my best friends, but since it was getting a little on age (the Thinkpad, not my friend), I just offered him a dual core HP NC4400 with a docking station and other extras. So I have back one of the Thinkpad models that startet my current collection.

Now I just have to clean it up a bit, decide which OS to instal, swap the palmrest (broken on the tipical place over the PCMCIA card), renew the thermal paste and the w-lan card (has currently a B model). RAM and HD are maxed out already... Maybe I post some pictures in the corresponding thread later.

I'm glad you got back the ThinkPad that started it all for you. I'm glad it's still working as the T22 that started it all for me, died completely when the Atmel power controller gave out. My fiancee gave me the system when the battery and power adapter for my MacBook went kaput.

Thanks! I see you use Arch Linux on your T22, my experience with Linux is limited to Ubuntu/Mint. Is it easy to install? Does it support the older ATI graphic cards? I remember that the newer Ubuntu distros stopped having the old ATI drivers and I had to use the VESA ones in my X31, which lowered the graphic performance when watching videos or sites with flash animations.

After rebooting, creating a normal user (if need be), getting the wired or wireless interface up and running and connected to the network using

Code:

dhcpcd <interface>

edit

Code:

/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

and uncomment the mirrors you want to use. After that run

Code:

pacman -Syy

to get the latest databases from the repositories, making sure that you press n after the question asking whether you want to update pacman. Next thing you do is run

Code:

pacman -S gcc gcc-lib

and press n at the same question. The reason for this is that there is an odd circular dependency. After that you can finally run

Code:

pacman -S pacman

to update pacman and then

Code:

pacman -Syu

to update the entire installation. Only after doing all that should you install anything extra with pacman and configure the system.

After that, it's just a matter of building on the base Arch gives you to get what you want. There is no GUI, automatic storage mounting, automatic network configuration or much automation at all by default. It's just you and the command line for a while.

As for the support for the older ATI graphics (I owned a Radeon 7000 64MB (AGP)), you're in luck. There is the open source driver which will support it. Check here for a listing of what the driver currently supports (everything under R100 applies to the 7000): http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature.

The wiki is a excellent source of information as is the Arch BBS (Forums). You can also check them on irc.freenode.net at #archlinux if you have a registered nick.

Hope it helps. Post here should you need any help. There are a few other Archers like myself around.